


secretly, between the shadow and the soul

by actualbluesargent



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-25 12:39:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15640932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualbluesargent/pseuds/actualbluesargent
Summary: Dex wakes up on his eighteenth birthday with three lines of poetry on his torso, which means his soulmate's a giant poetry nerd, or something.au where you and your soulmate get matching tattoos when you turn eighteen





	secretly, between the shadow and the soul

**Author's Note:**

> hi, i got into check, please! literally a week ago and i am!! obsessed! please take this attempt at entering the fandom thank u 
> 
> title from 'One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII' by Pablo Neruda. the full line is 'I love you as one loves certain obscure things,/secretly, between the shadow and the soul.' i make reference to this poem a lot in the fic, and obviously, i don't own it, it's all by the wonderful mr. neruda himself. yeah, spot the english major. 
> 
> also tw: q slur but it's like... an allen ginsberg reference so

The problem Dex has with soulmarks is that the data is inconclusive. It’s a fact of life, yeah, but no one knows how they work exactly. By laws of statistics, there has to be more than one person with the same soulmark as you, even if they’re not meant to be  _ your _ person. Scientists have tried, but none of them can explain why, on your eighteenth birthday, a patch of your skin goes against the pigment it had always had, and goes black, painting an image on your skin that’s supposed to help you find the one you’re supposed to be with.

Dex’s parents both have identical forests on their forearms, dark black trees stretching from wrist to elbow, mysterious and mystical. They look so real, and Dex spent many an hour of his childhood tracing his finger along the inky leaves, each so precise. He knows it’s not totally common, for people to actually find and marry their soulmates, he knows his parents are lucky. Each time he looks out into the forest near his home, he feels a tug that reminds him of his parents, how against all odds, a man from the backwoods in Michigan met a woman from Vancouver in a bar in Austria. 

So by all accounts, he  _ should _ believe in fate, in soulmarks. But he likes things he can explain, simple binaries, things he can see. So he isn’t nervous, isn’t excited when he goes to sleep the night before his eighteenth birthday. He’s  _ not _ .

From years of scientific curiosity trying to figure out soulmarks, he’s seen thousands of different soulmarks. Wishbones, hearts made of waves, bees with wings spread wide, even winding staircases. Images that mean something to one or both soulmates. 

So imagine his surprise when he wakes up and finds  _ words _ on his side, just under where his bicep would rest if he was standing. He doesn’t want to care, doesn’t want to find it exciting, but despite himself, he clambers out of bed and goes to a mirror. The words are backwards, there, and he can’t read them, but there’s something beautiful about them. They’re not in a dramatic flowing script, or gothic writing or anything, but it’s a delicate, simple font. He can see that it’s not English - Spanish, it looks like. He wants to trace it, like he did his mother’s, but decides first to figure out what it says. 

He lines his camera up with it, and then holds his phone in front of his face. He’s nervous, now, of course. 

“Sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres, tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía, tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño,” it reads. Because Dex lives in fucking  _ Maine _ , he learned French all through high school, so he has no idea what it means. He sighs, types the whole thing into google,  hopes it’ll just translate itself.

Google tells him it’s poetry, the final stanza in a poem by Pablo Neruda. He can’t help but read the English translation aloud, eyes darting back to the lines of Spanish on his torso. 

“ Except in this form in which I am not nor are you, so close that your hand upon my chest is mine, so close that your eyes close with my dreams,” he reads, the words more breath than words. A thrill goes through him, one that he’d never admit to, knowing that somewhere out there, there’s gonna be a girl (because he hasn’t realised he’s bisexual yet) with those lines, probably on her torso too.

-

He remembers Derek Nurse from the orientation tour back when he was still a senior. He was laid-back, chill, but otherwise didn’t leave that much of an impression. However, the second they step out on the ice, they clash immediately. He feels like after every practice, he walks away with bruises from either direct contact with Nursey, or caused because the other defenseman directly antagonised him. As the year progresses, though, their fights grow from being anywhere near personal to just habitual bickering, Dex mocking Nursey’s fancy clothes and hipster attitude, Nursey calling Dex out for being uptight, or sometimes just for  _ being a redhead _ . 

By the time they’ve hit their sophomore year, they’ve pretty much ironed out any major problems between the two of them, but that doesn’t mean he’s exactly thrilled to be sharing a room with the guy for a year. With Chowder, Nursey’s probably his best friend, which is weird, but he feels like their relationship is delicately preserved by the fact that if they’re bothering each other too much, they could always go back to their dorms to avoid the other. On the ice, they fit together perfectly, now, and Dex knows that he can pass the puck to Nursey without seeing him, and can trust the other defenseman will be there. 

As he watches the coin slip into the crack in the floorboards, he can’t help but worry that easiness will fall away, be replaced by pettiness that can grow from sharing a room. Not everyone can be Ransom and Holster. 

But if Nursey’s not going to back down, neither will he. They’ll make it work. If it’s through spite alone, then so be it.

-

He did wonder, joining the team, what the whole deal with soulmarks would be like. The team spend so much time in the locker room together, surely someone’s going to see someone else’s. For the first month or so, he’s hyper-aware of those beautiful lines of Spanish on his side, convinced that anytime he lifts his arm, someone’s going to read it. Despite himself, he’s achingly familiar with them, now, and not just the lines themselves, but the whole poem, in Spanish and in English. He’s not a poetry guy, but he figures his soulmate is, so he’ll know the poem inside and out, dammit. 

He catches glimpses of the other guys’ soulmarks, but he never wants to look for too long, it feels like an invasion of privacy. Once he gets over that, he forgets about his, too. It feels like an unwritten rule, that none of them will ask each other, just because it reveals so much about a person, and honestly, unless they match, it’s not really anyone else’s business.

Which is why he’s surprised to find out that not only are Jack and Bitty dating, but that they’re each others’ soulmates. If he’d paid more attention, he might have noticed that the two of them had delicate crowns on their shoulder-blades, but why would he pay attention to that kind of stuff?

It’s mindblowing, certainly, that had he not joined the Samwell hockey team, Dex might never have realised he was bisexual. The stereotypical grossness of a hockey team always seemed 100% straight, to him, as well as the serious conditioning from, like, society and every piece of media ever. Even in Samwell, a nationally-renowned progressive and liberal campus, he would never have thought that his greatest exposure to the LGBT+ community would be in a sports team. 

Maybe it’s a little selfish that finding out Jack and Bitty are dating causes him to analyse his own sexuality. Yeah, he always knew sports players could be gay, could like guys. Intellectually, it was obvious. But, he realises, there’s a difference between knowing something and  _ knowing _ you know something. 

Another reason Dex realises he’s bi is Nursey. It was never like Nursey’s handsome-ness was ever a surprise, Nursey’s attractiveness is nearly the first thing you notice about him. The way his hair is always artfully ruffled, his eyes a forest green that contain a near kaleidoscope of colour, the firmness of muscles in his chest - 

He’s getting off track.

The point is, Dex always knew Nursey was good-looking. He just thought that he knew it like he knew the sky was blue, like he knew two plus two equals four. Facts of life. 

When he finds out Bitty and Jack are dating, it sparks something in Dex’s subconscious, like a car getting a jolt of electricity to get it running again. Not only does he know Nursey is attractive, but he’s  _ attracted _ to Nursey. An important distinction.

He doesn’t feel a need to tell anyone, just files it away in his head, facts about himself that he was constantly learning since coming to Samwell. William Poindexter, 6’2, jersey 24, defenseman, bisexual. His soulmate could be a girl, but it could be a guy, too. Cool.  _ Chill, _ as Nursey would say.

-

He feels that familiar tug of attraction the first day back, a couple of days before the preseason officially starts. He’s working down in the basement, because of  _ course _ something got busted over the summer, and of  _ course _ he’ll fix it, Bitty, O Captain My Captain, he doesn’t need to unpack or anything. He’s working on the water heater when he hears -

“Dex, you asshole,” a familiar voice calls from the doorway.

He grins. “Nursey, is that you, you bastard?”

“I was gonna move in before you, man,” Nursey says, and Dex can hear him padding down the stairs. Dex is gonna tell him that he hasn’t even moved in, yet, that he literally dropped everything and started on the water heater, but goes for the bickering instead.

“Well, you snooze, you lose, old man,” he says, and can nearly  _ hear _ Nursey roll his eyes at him.

“Bit early to start competing for Bitty’s dibs, isn’t it?” Nursey says then, coming up to lean against the water heater. Dex glares up at him then, but can’t help the amused smile that pulls at his lips. Nursey smiles back, and he feels that grin in his chest, and  _ ah, hello, bisexuality, nice to hear from you again.  _

“I’m the local handyman, Nurse.” he reminds him. “I  _ like _ fixing things.”

“Chill, whatever you say. Anyway, I’m gonna go wreck our room and put poetry books everywhere!” Nursey says, practically sprinting back up the stairs.

“Don’t you fucking dare, Nursey!” he calls after him, laughter lacing his voice.

-

Even with his thing about his soulmark, the way he likes his privacy, he knows it’s kind of weird he hasn’t talked to Nursey, or even Chowder about it. He knows Nursey likes poetry, he probably even likes  _ Neruda _ , and it would be nice, to have someone to talk to about it, someone who gets it. Words don’t mean the same thing to Dex as they mean to Nursey - he doesn’t get all misty eyed over Walt Whitman or Maya Angelou or Allen Ginsberg (“Putting my queer shoulder to the wheel”? What does that even  _ mean _ ?), but he’d like to talk to someone who connects with poetry, who could connect with “ I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,” someone who could make sure he gets the poem in all the way his soulmate probably does.

Still, revealing that to Nursey - to  _ anyone _ \- it’s a level so personal Dex isn’t even sure he can properly comprehend it. Thousands of people have read Neruda, he knows that, but those three lines are a level of special to him that he hasn’t even said them aloud in the presence of other people.  _ Especially _ not one of his teammates.

-

After the first couple of days, they don’t really argue all that much. After Nursey pleads with Dex to stop leaving his tools lying around because, “Do you want me to trip and die, Poindexter? Is that your grand master plan?” and Dex insists on Nursey keeping all his “liberal arts shit” (his books) on his side of the room, and they both agree to stop firing dirty underwear at each other at random points in the night. Yeah, every now and then, things come to an extreme, but -

“Dude, I swear to god! If I find another one of your  _ cum socks  _ on the floor - ”

“Stop being such a dirty old man, Dex! They’re just socks! Smelly, hockey player socks! You should know what smelly hockey players are, considering you never fucking shower!” Nursey points an accusatory finger at him. 

“Rich coming from you,  _ loogey-spot _ !” Dex yells.

He swears Nursey’s eyes nearly roll back into his skull. “That’s the locker room! That’s different! Chill - ”

“Nursey, if you tell me to chill out right now I will put you in a chokehold _ so bad _ that you won’t live to see your next kegster!” Dex threatens, only half-joking with him.

He sees Nursey fighting a smile, trying to figure out if he’s serious or not. “Big threats there Dex, why don’t you - ”

“Guys!” Chowder yells. Dex blinks at him. He didn’t even notice he was there. “You’ve barely been in the Haus for two days.”

Dex drops his eyes to the floor, and he can feel a red blush sneaking up his neck and ears. “Sorry, C,” he says.

He looks up to see Nursey scratching the back of his neck. “Yeah, C. Sorry. Old habits, and all that.”

Chowder looks at them with more tired impatience than a hyperactive goalie should have. “I get that you two have a lot of hostility, you always have. You’re my best friends. I know. But since we were frogs, you guys have learned to leave it aside when we step out onto the ice. We don’t just play together, now. We  _ live _ together. You’re going to need to leave your crap outside of the Haus too.”

They let Chowder’s words echo through the room for a second, before Dex can stop himself from bursting into laughter. “Shit, Chow, where did that come from?”

“Yeah, man,” Nursey laughs, crossing the room to sling his arm around the goalie’s shoulders. “Who’ve you been taking lessons from, C?”

Chowder rolls his eyes. “You two are always going to have things to chirp me about, aren’t you?”

“Forever,” Dex says solemnly. Chowder groans.

-

Even when they stop arguing all the time, living with - no,  _ sharing a room with _ \- Nursey is, in short, total hell. And not in the dumb ways he would have thought - he has the top bunk, and Nursey for sure would be the childish asshole who would poke his feet through the slats just to fuck with his mattress in the middle of the night, or some shit. Or their music tastes clashing - he’s heard some of the indie shit Nursey plays, but when the two of them are studying in their room, or down in the living room of the Haus, he’ll play mellow hip-hop, or older stuff like ATCQ, which Dex finds he doesn’t mind.

The problem is that Nursey is, for lack of a better word, fucking  _ hot _ , and Dex can’t escape it. Dex sees him first thing in the morning, bedhead ruffled and voice thick with sleep, his face soft because he hasn’t fully woken up yet. He sees him when he comes into the room after a shower, wet hair, water dripping down his chest. Even just around the Haus, Nursey will sit at breakfast in a tanktop, leaving Dex to just try and  _ ignore _ his fucking biceps and his shoulders. It’s different to seeing him in the changing room, because there’s a bunch of other guys there, and he can kind of turn off the part of his brain that notices that shit. In the Haus, he doesn’t get a break. He’ll collapse onto the couch to watch some TV, and Nursey will join him, sticking his feet in Dex’s lap, and Dex has nothing to do but rest his hand on Nursey’s ankles, or something, and the warmth of the skin on skin touch is so much he feels like he’s just blushing  _ all the time. _

And it’s not even just the physical attraction anymore. The two of them will be walking together to Faber, and Nursey will be talking with his hands about the latest book he read, or a game they were watching, and Dex just feels a tightness in his chest and a wave of fondness just out of nowhere. Or if they’re having breakfast in the Haus, as Bitty rushes around them, Nursey will look up at him over his cup of coffee, with a smile in his eyes, and Dex’s mouth just goes dry. He feels bad, having a crush on Nursey when he has a soulmate out there, someone who Dex will click with immediately, not someone that he spent the first two months of his acquaintance physically brawling with. 

And then - 

One day he passes Nursey as he’s heading out of the shower, as Nursey’s towelling his hair dry. With his arms raised, Dex is able to see some markings on his side. It’s too quick for him to know what the markings are, but he’s not an idiot - it’s probably his soulmark. His breath catches for a second when he realises it’s in the same place as his own, as his lines of poetry. And Nursey loves poetry, he knew that, so it’s plausible that…

Fuck. Could Nursey be his soulmate?

He tries to think of a way to bring it up - thinks of asking him about Neruda, about his parents. Could he casually bring up the way Jack and Bitty made him realise bisexuality was an option? 

He’s stressing about it absent-mindedly in the library one day. Shitty and Lardo are visiting, and while Dex loves the community spirit of the team, he has coding shit to do for  _ tomorrow, _ so he dragged Nursey to go study with him. However, Shitty and Lardo just gets him thinking about soulmates again.

“Dude,” Nursey says, waving a hand in front of his face. “Earth to Dex. You good?’

“Sorry, man,” he says, and then he swallows. “I was just thinking about my parents. It’s their anniversary soon, and I never know what to get them because - they’re soulmates. I feel like nothing I get them will top what they get each other.”

Nursey lets out a gentle laugh. He’s sitting across from Dex, which is not good for him, because anytime he looks up, he just gets a full blast of  _ Nursey _ , his face focused, mouthing the words of whatever he’s reading. 

“What do you think about all of it?” he asks Nursey, taking a leap. “Soulmarks?”

Nursey looks at him for a moment, contemplative. He twiddles the pen in his fingers, a physical manifestation of the cogs in his brain whirring. 

“I think anything I have to say is biased,” he says, finally. Dex raises his eyebrows. Nursey looks at him, his dark green eyes scanning his face, like there’s answers to be found there. “Because I don’t have one.”

Dex blinks. “You… don’t have one?”

The plummet of disappointment in his stomach is only overshadowed by the shock of the statement. It makes no sense. If anyone deserves a soulmate, it’s Nursey. He was born on  _ Valentine’s Day, _ he’s a flirt and a romantic, the kind of guy that love was made for. If he doesn’t get a soulmate, then why does someone like Dex get one, someone who hardly believes in the whole thing?

Nursey shrugs, eyes on his work again. “Nope. Woke up on my eighteenth birthday, no new marks on my skin. It’s chill, I’ve gotten used to it.” He looks up, flashes a smile at Dex. “Don’t need a soulmate for me to romance in my life, know what I mean?”

Dex rolls his eyes. “You’re the worst, dude.”

Finding out that Nursey doesn’t have a soulmark, that he doesn’t have a soulmate, doesn’t change their relationship that much. It’s private information, yeah, but they’ve known each other and played on the same team for over two and a half years. It’s new information, but it’s the kind of information that just stretches his understanding of his roommate. Like how Nursey gets up early on Sundays to go for a jog before breakfast, or how if he’s hit on his left side he’s more likely to fall, because of an old ballet injury. Stuff like that.

The fact it dashes Dex’s weird ‘Nursey is my soulmate’ fantasy barely comes into play. Except on days when the sun shines through the window and turns his skin a beautiful golden brown, or when Dex makes a dumb joke and Nursey laughs brilliant and loud. It’s fine. He’s good.

In the shower, or when he’s alone in his room, he still finds himself tracing those words, mouthing them to himself. It’d be nice if they stopped hurting him by existing.

-

The first Monday of classes of the spring semester, Nursey practically skips out of bed. He’s up and in the shower before Dex is able to comprehend the fact that it’s  _ morning, _ and Dex can hear him singing from all the way down the hall.

“Dude, why are you so happy?” Dex laughs, when Nursey comes back in.

“Because, darling Dexter,” Nursey grins. “Today, I’m starting my Latino poets class! Fuckin’ Neruda! Finally!”

Dex nearly chokes on thin air. “Neruda?”

Nursey rolls his eyes. “C’mon, Dex, we’ve been friends for nearly three years. You know who Pablo Neruda is.”

“Yeah, no, I - I do,” he coughs, trying to regain his composure. He pulls himself to sitting up in bed. “Chilean poet, right? I didn’t know you were a fan,”

“Bro, you know my grandma’s from Chile. I was  _ raised _ on Neruda’s poetry, man. One thing, I know these classes are gonna be on the English versions, and I learned them in Spanish. So that’s gonna be interesting, I guess.”

Dex’s brain is going about a hundred miles an hour. It’s terrible, because he  _ knows _ Nursey doesn’t have a soulmate. But it’s times like this, when he aligns perfectly with what Dex imagined his soulmate to be, that he struggles to breathe. How is he supposed to figure out who his soulmate is when he could just kid himself and hang out with Nursey all the time?

“Ah,” he says, lamely. 

“Ah?” Nursey repeats, looking at him. He’s pulled a tank top on, and Dex can see those markings he’d thought were a soulmark. His eyebrows are raised, and he’s looking at Dex puzzled. 

“No, it’s just, uh, I - uh, my - ” he stumbles over his words. He doesn’t know why he’s nervous, it’s not like it’ll make a difference. If Nursey can tell him that he doesn’t have a soulmark - “My soulmark is, uh, lines of Neruda poetry, actually.”

He clears his throat, and drops his eyes, looking literally anywhere but Nursey’s dumb forest green eyes.  

“Poetry?” Nursey asks, his voice weirdly strangled-sounding. “I didn’t know they could be words,”

Dex finally looks back at him. His expression is unreadable, almost like he’s looking at Dex for the very first time.

“Yeah, me neither. But I woke up, and - ” he pulls his shirt up and off, turning to his side, displaying the tattoo. “It’s in Spanish, so I had to google it, but - yeah.”

He can feel a blush rushing up his neck, cheeks and ears, showing his soulmark to someone for the first time, but he doesn’t allow himself to cover it.

Nursey makes a sound close to a gasp, and he’s looking at Dex with that unreadable expression again.

“Sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres, tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía, tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño,” Nursey says, those words that Dex knows so well. He’s not reading them, just looking Dex in the eye, saying them word for word.In his mouth the words sound like a lullaby, as beautiful as it was always intended. They’re soft and magical, and if Dex could hear nothing but those words from Nursey’s mouth forever, he’d be content. 

“Fuck, dude,” he laughs. “It sounds so much better when you say it. How - ”

Before he can continue, Nursey’s pulling his tank top off, and comes to stand closer to where Dex is sitting. He turns, and lifts his arm, displaying the markings Dex had spotted. Except now, close up, he can see they’re a tattoo, three lines of poetry. And he knows them, knows them exactly, has spent the last three years looking at the exact same lines on his own torso.

He looks up at Nursey, who’s watching him with almost concern. “But I thought you said - ”

“I got this tattooed when I was seventeen, after my grandma died.” Nursey says. “It was her favourite poem.”

Dex blinks. “So does that mean, you didn’t get a soulmark because - ”

“You just got mine,” Nursey breathes.

The two of them just look at each other, then, eyes full of disbelief and wonder. 

“Fuck,” Nursey says. “I, I didn’t think I’d get one. And then… then it’s  _ you. _ ”

Dex bites his lip. “Sorry to disappoint,”

“Dex,” Nursey says, and Dex has never heard his voice so gentle. “I’ve basically been in love with you for the last year.”

“You’re shitting me,” Dex says, because there’s no way he gets to live in a world where not only is his crush his soulmate, but also is in love with him. 

“‘Fraid not,” he says. “I know it might take some time, getting used to the idea that your soulmate’s - that he’s a guy - ”

“ _ Derek.” _ he says, and Nursey stops talking. Dex searches in the furthest reaches of his vocabulary to explain how  _ little _ of a problem Nursey being his soulmate is, but Nursey’s always been the poet. Instead, he leans down, putting his hand on Nursey’s shoulder for support, and kisses him.

It’s an awkward angle, considering Dex is still sitting on the top bunk, but he doesn’t care, because Nursey responds immediately, hand immediately going up to hold his jaw, lips soft and amazing. Warmth flows through Dex all the way to his toes, a kind of magic he’s never experienced when kissing anyone before. He wants to do nothing but this, run his fingers through his hair, kiss him until he’s dizzy from it and kiss him some more. Nursey pulls back and kisses him again, mouth open and insistent, hot and perfect. Nursey’s the poet, but Dex wants to get drunk off these kisses, lock their memories away so he can never forget. 

They pull back, and Dex watches as Nursey’s eyes flutter open, his beautiful eyes staring back into his. Something like decision crosses his features. 

“Move over,” Nursey says, and when Dex does, Nursey pulls himself up the ladder and onto the top bunk with him. Having Nursey this close, Dex finds his eyes going to the tattoo at his side, the words that were so important to Nursey that not even fate could find something more fitting for them. 

“Can I?” he asks, raising his hand. Nursey nods, silent, and Dex goes to trace the words he knows so well. Nursey takes a sharp intake of breath as his fingers move along his side, but still doesn’t say anything. They look so beautiful on Nursey’s tan skin, with no freckles dotted between the words. As his index finger runs over ‘sueño’, he looks back up at Nursey. He swallows. “Would you say them again?”

Nursey grins, that excellent smile that always tugged at Dex’s heartstrings. He doesn’t say anything, only surges forward to press his lips against Dex’s again. Dex keeps his hand on his side, hand firm on where he knows the tattoo is, but leans back as Nursey gently pushes him back into the mattress. 

“Sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,” he says, pulling back from the kiss, breathing the words into Dex’s ear, sending chills down his spine. He presses a kiss against Dex’s jaw. “Tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,” He kisses Dex’s neck. “Tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño,”

“Jesus Christ,” Dex breathes, pulling him back up for a kiss.

Nursey grins. “Actually, it’s Derek.”

Dex laughs, rolling his eyes. “God, you’re such a dick.”

“Well, I’m your soulmate,” Nursey laughs, but Dex can see the flicker of something like doubt in his eyes.

“Yeah,” Dex smiles, looking Nursey up and down. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

**Author's Note:**

> once i caught up on all of check please i immediately started binge-reading nurseydex fanfic so please come yell at me on tumblr @neiljostensmh because i have so many feelings
> 
> thanks for reading x


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